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Here are 10 of 26 proven strategies gleaned from interviews with highly successful people who have overcome obstacles to live out their dreams. Regardless of your career or industry, when applied, these success principles can shorten your learning curve and be a catalyst for your success.

These principles were excerpted from the book, “I Can?t Believe I Get Paid To Do This!” Remarkable People Reveal 26 Proven Strategies For Making Your Dreams a Reality by Stacey Mayo.

Even if you already read the book, you may want to print these out as a reminder. I personally find I cannot be reminded too many times. Each time I read the stories, I see a new way to apply something to my life or remember how important it is to keep doing it.

1) Create Wealth in Alignment With Your Passions

It is important to focus on what you are passionate about first and then find a way to make money at it. Get in touch with your heart first, otherwise, the left side of your brain will rule out perfectly good ideas without having explored them.

?Money allows us the freedom to pursue the things that are important to us. Money is not an end it itself.?
Stacy Allison, first American woman to successfully climb Mt. Everest

2) Honor Numero Uno: Design Your Life Around Your Priorities

Many people try to fit their dreams into their life and complain there are not enough hours in the day to make it happen. If you want your dream to become a reality, make it a priority. Otherwise, it will never be more than a pipedream.

3) Visualize Every Step of Your Dream and Watch the Magic Unfold

The muscle movement that helps us physically take action in our lives begins in the mind. That is why all great golfers, tennis players, basketball players, etc. visualize themselves making a shot beforehand. An experiment conducted by Alan Richardson, an Australian psychologist, found 23% performance improvement among subjects who visualized every day for 20 days. In his paper published in Research Quarterly, Richardson wrote that the most effective visualization occurs when the visualizer feels and sees what he is doing.

?I really visualized it, too, even as a child watching those programs. I could visualize myself walking up the stage, up the stairs. For me, visualizing those dreams happening was pertinent to making that happen, because I could see it. I pictured it in my head?
Mary Youngblood, welfare mom turned Grammy Award Winner

4) Easy Does It: Inspired Action Always Trumps Forced Action

Inspired action is joyful action that is in alignment with your dream. It is action you want to take and the idea of it brings a smile to your face. When you take inspired action, you are aligned with what you are doing and things flow naturally.

Contrast this to action that you are forcing yourself to take regardless of whether you feel like doing it. Maybe you are in a bad mood or have a headache but decide you have to take this action and keep trudging forward. The likelihood is that if you take action from this place it will take you twice as long to accomplish your task or goal or there will be obstacles that come up along the way. It?s like swimming against strong currents.

5) Laser in On One Idea, Business or Income Stream at a Time

One of the mistakes people make is diversifying too quickly. This is true whether you are trying to build multiple streams of income or are just working on several different ideas at one time. The key is getting the first stream or idea up and running, producing good revenue, and having systems in place so it will keep running without you before going on to the next unrelated stream.

?Several things going on at one time is a distraction to cash.?
Loral Langemeier, single mom, financial literacy coach and millionaire

To live out your dreams, requires you to stretch, get out of your comfort zone and try new things, even when you don?t know how they will turn out. It is important to let go of your fear of the unknown and trust that you will be able to handle whatever happens.

This doesn?t mean to jump without a net, i.e., without any means of support or knowledge of what you are doing. It simply means to take small steps in the direction in which you want to go. It can be tremendously helpful to get support from experienced friends, mentors or coaches to support you in this.

Often people only take on what they know they can do; i.e. they stay within their comfort zone. It is a natural tendency for people to want to stay within their comfort zone even if they are unhappy, simply because it is familiar and they perceive it is safe.

I use the word perceive here because I have talked to many clients and perspective clients over the years who stayed in their job even though they were unhappy because they thought it was safe. The amount of layoffs in corporate America between the years 2000-2003 began to shake up that paradigm. I am proud to tell people that though the corporation I used to work for as VP, Human Resources is no longer in business, my small company is still prospering. Security is not found in a corporation or in anything external, it is found within ourselves.

I interviewed Stacy Allison, the first woman to climb Mt. Everest for my upcoming book, I Can’t Believe I Get Paid To Do This!: Remarkable People Reveal 26 Proven Strategies for Making Your Dreams a Reality.

Stacy stretches beyond her comfort zone regularly. This plays a large role in her success. The first time Stacy scaled a rock; it was? very, very hard? for her. Later she chose to climb a mountain that was ten years beyond her experience level. It is important to note that she went with people who had the experience and could guide her through the challenge.

Throughout her life, in climbing, speaking and writing, Stacy continued to take on challenges that were above and beyond what she knew she could do. In taking on these challenges, she increased her confidence in her abilities, pushed beyond what she knew herself capable of and indeed, became the first woman to successfully scale Mt. Everest. (You can read the whole incredible story in my book, I Can’t Believe I Get Paid To Do This!: Remarkable People Reveal 26 Proven Strategies for Making Your Dreams a Reality.)

Coaching Questions:

1) Where in your career or personal life are you hanging out in your comfort zone even though you know that stretching beyond it would bring you closer to your dream?

2) What thoughts or circumstances are keeping you there?

3) What are you resisting?

4) Who could you get to support you in moving forward? (Pick someone who will be unconditionally supportive)

Article by Stacey Mayo. Stacey Mayo founded the Center for Balanced Living in 1995 as a vehicle for carrying out her life’s work and has since supported thousands of people in making their dreams come true. She is author of “I Can’t Believe I Get Paid To Do This!: Remarkable People Reveal 26 Proven Strategies for Making Your Dreams a Reality.”

To receive more articles like this, subscribe to my monthly ezine, Living Out Your Dreams and receive a free self-assessment for Healthy Success.

Are you waiting? Rather than living out their dreams, many people wait and wait and wait. What are you waiting for? Clarity on what direction to go in? To get really, really good at whatever it is you want to do? For a sign that it’s the right time to move on? For a guarantee that you will not be rejected or fail? These are just a few of the thoughts people have which keep them from moving forward. Stop and think for a minute about what thoughts usually stop you.

Often these thoughts are tied in with the need to do things right or perfectly or with the need to know what to expect. This is the nemesis of perfection. Simply put, if we wait for everything to line up perfectly before taking some kind of action, we will be waiting forever.

I had to be pushed by my coach to lead my first workshop nearly 10 years ago. I kept saying, “I wasn’t ready.” What I meant was, “it wasn’t perfect, yet.” What I have since learned and keep re-learning is perfection and refinement come in the doing. That is where the real learning takes place. I led my first personal mission statement workshop for a group of acquaintances at no charge. The workshop wasn’t great — but it wasn’t terrible either. I got incredibly helpful feedback from the participants. From there I was able to refine it and teach it in the adult education programs of the local colleges. The feedback I got from the participants is not anything I could have learned on my own. The learning was in the doing. Now I teach and certify other people to facilitate that workshop and have turned it into the workbook in an ebook, “Is Your Ladder Leaning Against the Wrong Wall?. None of that would have been possible had I not taken that first step nearly ten years ago.

When I was proofreading my book, “I Can’t Believe I Get Paid To Do This!” for the 5th time, that same fear of missing a mistake was present. But this time it would be printed and there would be no taking it back. Eventually, I had to get over that and send the book to print. To my knowledge, there is at least one typo in the book (my mom caught it :)). And when I go back for a second printing very soon, I will correct it. In the meantime, the book is in the hands of a lot of people who are moving forward with their dreams.

The fear of failure is tied in with the nemesis of perfection; i.e., if I don’t do it right or make the right choice, then I fail. Failure does not have to be devastating. Rather it can be viewed as an opportunity to learn. Everyone fails sometimes. The people who have the most successes in life also generally have had the most failures. That is because they keep coming back and try again and again.

Where are you willing to take a chance this week? Here are some possibilities to choose from or create your own.

* Create or write something and allow it to be okay if it’s not perfect.
* Do something you’ve never done before.
* Ask someone you’ve been admiring or would like to get to know out for coffee or a meal.
* Share your creative work with someone whose opinion you respect.
* Submit your idea, work, talent to someone who has the ability to hire you or purchase something from you.

What are you waiting for? Take the leap (or at least one small step) and let me know how it goes.

To receive more articles like this, subscribe to my monthly ezine, Living Out Your Dreams and receive a free self-assessment for Healthy Success.

What stops you from living out your dreams? Over the years, I have coached thousands of people in living out their dreams and have heard at least as many reasons why people don’t believe they can make them happen. I have nicknamed these challenges “Oblocks” – obstacles that block us and occur as so large that we can’t see our way around them.

Many times the obstacles to living out your dreams seem larger than the dream itself. When you focus on these obstacles; that is all you can see. They get larger and larger and take up a greater portion of your mental capacity. Let me give you a simple example. Jim and Mary are riding their bicycles to school and they spot a loose brick in the road. Jim sees the brick and wants to avoid it but he fails to see an on-going car, swerves and hits the brick and takes a tumble. Mary notices the brick, continues to focus on where she is going, bypasses the brick, and goes onward to her destination. And so it goes for living out your dreams. When you focus on obstacles such as fear of failure or lack of expertise, they will paralyze you. When you focus on your vision, you can brainstorm ways to go past the obstacle and move toward your vision.

Here are some of the more common Oblocks that stop people. Which ones resonate with you?

Marital status or age:
1. I am single and have to depend on myself
2. I am married and have to support my family
3. I’m too old; maybe if I were younger

Lack of expertise, credibility, belief in self:
4. I don’t know how
5. I’m not an expert in that
6. Who am I to do something like that?
7. I’m not smart enough
8. I am not talented enough
9. “It’s” not out there

Financial, time, scarcity:
10. I can’t do it now; I’ll wait until I retire
11. I’ll do it when I make big bucks
12. I can’t make money doing that
13. I’ll lose my insurance and other benefits
14. I don’t have enough money to do that
15. There’s not enough time
16. It will take too long
17. I am not vested in my retirement fund yet

Fear of failure or pain
23. I’ve tried before and failed
24. What if this isn’t it?
25. I might get hurt.
26. What if I fail?

Most of these statements are directly related to our fears. Many are scarcity-related conversations. When we live in these fears and disempowering beliefs, those are exactly what we get. When we believe our dreams are possible, then they are. The trick is to believe in your dream, take action and allow it to unfold.

* Visualize what it is you want to have happen.

* Imagine it as if it already has.

* Script it out and write the story as if it already happened and make it as exciting and fantastic as possible.

* Notice the kinds of questions you are asking yourself. Do they help you move forward or keep you stuck? Ask yourself, “What is one small thing can I do to move forward to making this dream a reality?”

* Notice what you are inspired to do and do it.

* Take one day at a time and continue to ask yourself, “what is one thing I can do to move forward today?”

Article by Stacey Mayo. Stacey Mayo founded the Center for Balanced Living in 1995 as a vehicle for carrying out her life’s work and has since supported thousands of people in making their dreams come true. She is author of “I Can’t Believe I Get Paid To Do This! “: Remarkable People Reveal 26 Proven Strategies for Making Your Dreams a Reality.

To receive more articles like this, subscribe to my monthly ezine, Living Out Your Dreams and receive a free self-assessment for Healthy Success.

It is easy to get caught up in the day-to-day stress of everyday life: deadlines to meet, schedules to keep, unexpected expenses, conflicts to resolve, illness of loved ones, to name a few. Amidst all this, it is easy to for me to lose sight of why I do what I do ? my purpose for being. I discovered my passion and my purpose over seven years ago. It was the catalyst for starting my business, The Center for Balanced Living in 1996. It is what led me to my purpose which is to empower you to live out your dreams with ease and abundance. Sometimes I get caught up in the external factors and forget to focus on what is really important. It is then that I must remind myself why I am here. It is a grounding place for me.

I teach my clients to look to their life for their passions and purpose. That is certainly where mine came from and I have found it to be true for many others. A lot of different threads weave through my story, but the most obvious and first I can remember centered around my life while I was growing up, and most specifically my dad. I’d like to share that story with you now.

I always had the impression my dad was unhappy. Actually, miserable is more the way I would describe him. He was mostly unhappy about his jobs . . . all of them that I can remember. I vividly remember my dad coming home from work, with his shoulders hunched over and his head hanging low. He would walk right past a mosaic picture of horses pulling a carriage through the snow.

Looking exhausted and sad, he would sit down at the kitchen table and say to my mom, ?Charlie (that?s what he called her), I can?t take it anymore. I want to quit my job!? And I can remember my mom, who was looking after our security and well-being in the best way she knew how, saying, ?Just hang in there Mac. Stick it out! We need the money!? And I can remember thinking, ?Yeah! Hang in there! We need the money!? We didn?t have much money in those days.

This story repeated itself year after year, as my dad persevered. The last two years of his career were literally a countdown to retirement at age 65. My dad retired at age 65. Two years later, he did some introspective thinking at the prompting of his daughter. At age 67, my dad declared himself an artist. I can still remember the moment he told me. My eyes got teary as I recalled the beautiful, mosaic picture on their living-room wall.

You see my dad made that mosaic picture, but I never saw him working on it. He created it before I was born. It was a beautiful mosaic, made of thousands of small hand-cut tiles. My dad had always been an artist but had suppressed that talent for most of his life while he strove to earn a living for his family. He worked in the garment industry in New York, and then the carpet industry in Florida. I often wonder what would have been possible if my dad had worked out a way to utilize his artistic abilities in his jobs. He had always been a good employee; he might have been a happy one too.

For a while my dad was happier than I had ever seen him. He carved wood etchings and gave them away as gifts. He traveled to places he had never seen. He also made more money in his investments than he did at his jobs. I am glad he had that short time period when he was happy. Unfortunately, it wasn?t too long before my dad?s health started to decline. Eventually, he lost patience and could no longer focus on his artwork. And right now, he is not strong enough to travel. My dad waited until he retired to do what he loved. It was a small time window in the whole continuum of his life. That is why, more than ever, I strongly urge people to move forward now — don?t wait until you retire to do what you love. We all tend to live as if we have forever, but really, who knows our time allotment?

Are you doing what you love to do?
If not, what is one action step you can take today to move you forward?

Do you know your purpose in life? If so, take the time today to get re-grounded in it. If not, take the time to reflect on what you want to contribute in this lifetime. Consider hiring a coach to help you discover that.

Article by Stacey Mayo. Stacey Mayo founded the Center for Balanced Living in 1995 as a vehicle for carrying out her life’s work and has since supported thousands of people in making their dreams come true. She is author of “I Can’t Believe I Get Paid To Do This! “: Remarkable People Reveal 26 Proven Strategies for Making Your Dreams a Reality.

To receive more articles like this, subscribe to my monthly ezine, Living Out Your Dreams and receive a free self-assessment for Healthy Success.